Playing With Barbies Could Limit Girls' Goals for Future

Summary: A new suggests that girls who play with Barbie dolls view their career opportunities to be limited compared to girls who play with other toys. The takeaway: Be sure you give your preschooler a variety of toys to play with.

By Sharon Mazel | Posted: March 6, 2014

Barbie dolls are treasured toys, passed from mother to daughter, sister to sister, and friend to friend. In fact, some statistics show that 99 percent of all girls ages 3 to 10 have owned at least one Barbie doll — despite the fact that critics say the doll sends unrealistic messages to young girls about ideal body types and looks. And now a new study gives parents another reason to think twice before handing over Barbies to their preschool age daughters.

According to researchers at Oregon State University, playing with Barbies may limit a young girl's ideas about what she can do with her life.

For their study published in the journal Sex Roles, researchers looked at nearly 40 girls ages four to seven and split them into three groups. One group was given a regular fashion Barbie to play with. The second group was given "career" Barbie dolls — those dressed as doctors. The third group was given Mrs. Potato Head — a neutral doll without the sexualized characteristics of Barbie. The researchers then gave the girls depictions of 10 individual careers--half male-dominated and half female-dominated, such as construction worker, firefighter, pilot, doctor, police officer, teacher, librarian, day-care worker, flight attendant and nurse — and asked each girl, "Could you do this job when you grow up?" and "Could a boy do this job when he grows up?"

They found that the girls who played with Barbies saw themselves in significantly fewer careers than the girls who played with Mrs. Potato Heads. For Mrs. Potato Head players, girls said they could do the equivalent of 4 to 4.5 (out of five) jobs compared with 4.5 jobs they believed boys could do. But for Barbie players, girls said they could do 3.3 (of five) jobs compared with 4.7 jobs they thought boys could do.

But the big surprise was that there was no difference between the girls who played with Doctor Barbie and those who played with Fashion Barbie. Barbie dolls come with all types of costumes, including Presidential Candidate Barbie, CEO Barbie, and Computer Engineer Barbie. But despite the different costumes, say researchers, Doctor Barbie and Fashion Barbie aren't all that different, especially because Doctor Barbie wears tight-fitting pink glittery jeans and a tight V-neck shirt under her white coat, she still has long full hair with an extremely youthful face (no wrinkles on her!), and has an unrealistic body.

The takeaway for the researchers? Girls are clearly learning from the toys they're playing with. "Playing with Barbie has an effect on girls' ideas about their place in the world," according to the study's author. "It creates a limit on the sense of what's possible for their future. While it's not a massive effect, it is a measurable and statistically significant effect."

The takeaway for parents? Though one toy is unlikely to have a huge impact on your child's career aspirations, dolls and action figures can influence a child's ideas about her future. So it makes sense to take a look at the toys your daughter is playing with and if it's heavy on fashion dolls and light on other types of toys, it might be a good idea to diversify the toy box a bit.

This study comes fresh on the heels of a recent Sports Illustrated magazine that featured a Barbie doll in its annual swimsuit issue, raising the ire of many critics who wondered why Barbie manufacturer Mattel chose to put a child's toy in a magazine issue that hypersexualizes women. Barbie has also been in the news lately because an artist recently announced his intention to manufacture a Barbie with an average 19- year-old woman's body — and not surprisingly the prototype looks nothing like the Barbies you buy in the toy store.

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